Japan

Looks like that box of fish sticks in the back of your freezer is going to stay there.

Space World, a Japanese theme park, shutdown their ice skating rink attraction on Sunday, because as it turns out, most people don’t consider skating around dead fish to be a winter wonderland. The theme park froze 5,000 sea creatures into the floor of their skating rink, thinking that attendees would enjoy the challenge of navigating an ocean graveyard. Space World called it “Freezing Port.” We call it “A Nightmare.”

Freezing Port received a slew of complaints from visitors and animal rights organizations. One Facebook user said, “You have no soul.” While another simply, and more practically, said, “This is the worst attraction educationally.” Apparently, only a select few found Space World's Facebook advertisements with captions that read “I am d... d... drowning, s ... s... suffocating” funny and not horrifying.

CNN added the park will “unfreeze the skate rink to remove the fish, hold an ‘appropriate religious service,’ and then reuse them as fertilizer.” Cool.

So there you have it. Theme park buys locally-sourced seafood, freezes it into their skating rink, and holds memorial service for the fish after learned that people don’t like ice skating on dead fish. Welcome to Monday morning on Planet Earth.

Almost a week ago, Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka was left on the side of the road near a "bear-infested" forest in Hokkaido, Japan. The search began after the missing boy dissapeared into the forest, thinking his parents had left him for good as punishment for throwing rocks at cars and visitors at a nearby park. Miraculously, this little boy was found ALIVE and relatively unharmed after six nights alone in the forest.

Yamato managed to survive in the forest for so long after stumbling upon a hut used during training for the Japanese military. He did not have any food or heating but he did manage to keep warm by sleeping between two mattresses. He also had access to clean water nearby. For now, he's being kept for observation under a doctors orders but seems to be doing fine. This event has sparked debate over where normal parental punishment can cross the line into abuse with most people on social media condemning his parents for leaving him.

The Running Christmas Tree is the latest revolutionary wearable device to have been developed by Tokyo-based inventor Joseph Tame.
This mobile seasonal illumination device has been designed to disrupt the illumination industry by allowing for on-demand illumination - simply pull out your phone and summon the Christmas tree anytime, anywhere, and Joseph will head in your direction to bring some light into your life.
Featuring over 1500 LEDs, 9 mico-controlers and 100 batteries, this 25kg / 2.5metre tree is unlike anything seen before, and has been a huge hit on the streets of Tokyo where the service was first rolled out.
Full information on the tree and links to book it for yourself can be found a: http://tokyoxmas.org

Likewise, the offer is for a limited time only. It's available only in Niigata Prefecture and part of a promotional tie-up with the the newly launched pop group NGT48, the Niigata-based spin-off of the massively popular idol unit AKB48. The groups tend to have around 48 members (sometimes more, sometimes less), divided up into different teams. That's a lot of idols. That's okay, this is a lot of nuggets. Forty-eight nuggets is surely a whole chicken, no? Fifty has to be.

A rare photo of Hachiko, the Japanese Akita dog know as the "World's Most Loyal Dog," has emerged 80 years after his death.

The story of Hachiko and his owner Uneo dates back to 1920's Tokyo, where it is said Hachiko would wait every day at the train station for Uneo to arrive back home from work.

This happened every day, until 1925 when Uneo unexpectedly died while at work.

Hachiko couldn't understand that his owner had died, so he stood watch at the train station for 10 years until his death in 1935.

Most photos of Hachiko (like the one above) only show him standing alone, but the new photo shows his surroundings.

The photo shows the dog blending in naturally at the station, and is totally different from other memorial and closeup photos.

When Hachiko is pictured alone, the environment around the dog is unclear. Almost all shots of the dog with people were taken as memorial photos.

The photo found recently was taken around 1934 by the late Isamu Yamamoto, a former bank employee who lived in the Sarugakucho district in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. That year, the first statue of the dog was erected in front of the station and Hachiko attracted public attention as a faithful dog.

Hidekichi Miyazaki, dubbed "Golden Bolt" after the fastest man on the planet, clocked 42.22 seconds in Kyoto to set a world record in the 100-meter dash for the over-105 age category — which had been nonexistent — a day after his birthday.

"I'm not happy with the time," the pint-size Miyazaki said in an interview after catching his wind. "I started shedding tears during the race because I was going so slowly. Perhaps I'm getting old!"

Indeed, so leisurely was his pace that Bolt could have run his world record of 9.58 seconds four times, or practically completed a 400-meter race — a fact not lost on Miyazaki.

...Asked about Bolt's latest heroics at the IAAF World Championships last month in Beijing, Miyazaki screwed up his nose and said with a chuckle: "He hasn't raced me yet!"

The twinkle-toed Miyazaki, who holds the 100-meter record for centenarians at 29.83 seconds, insisted there was still time for a dream race against the giant Jamaican.

Miyazaki said he thought he could get his time down to 35 seconds and we believe him.